Electronic equipment is widely used to perform various functions including computational operations. As used herein, the term “electronic equipment” refers to any equipment with computational capability. Accordingly, as used herein, electronic equipment can include one or more enterprise, application, personal, pervasive and/or embedded computer systems that perform computational operations. Examples of electronic equipment, as used herein, include computer workstations, modems, personal digital assistants, cell phones, email i-pagers, and computer-controlled appliances, such as set-top boxes, microwave ovens, televisions, MP3 players and digital video recorders.
Electronic equipment may be tampered with, such that their operating software/firmware/hardware, application software, and/or data contained in the equipment is altered, via direct and/or remote access. It may be extremely difficult and, perhaps, even theoretically impossible, to prevent this tampering, especially when the electronic equipment is located in an area to which potential unauthorized parties, also known as “hackers,” may have actual physical access, such as a business or a home. This susceptibility to tampering can affect the degree to which the device can be trusted.
It may be difficult to detect whether such tampering has occurred, because once electronic equipment is tampered with, it may be possible for the attacker who has performed the tampering to alter the electronic equipment's software/firmware/hardware to include particular functionality such that any checks may be actively fooled by the altered operation of the compromised electronic equipment.